Hilary Mason: The opportunities open data brings

When she remembers one of the first hackathons in which she participated, Hilary Mason admits what made it fun was not creating the usual data visualization or mobile app.

“It was a frosted cake with LEDs that could tell you if someone was happy or sad as you approached it,” Mason, former chief scientist with Bit.ly and now data scientist in residence at Accel Partners, told the crowd at CODE Inspiration Day late last week at the University of Waterloo’s Statford, Ont. campus. “I’m a huge fan of hackathons, because it’s an opportunity to take some time, meet a lot of people and make something awesome. Don’t worry about how much money you’re going to make, or whether you’re going to win a prize. Just do something that kicks ass.”

CODE, otherwise known as the Canadian Open Data Experience, was a cross-country event led by the federal government’s Treasury Board to encourage use of the resources it has made available on Data.gc.ca. As Mason pointed out, the open data movement doesn’t just offer extra material for those involved in the user experience design of citizens. Used correctly, open data can have a profound impact on critical services.

In a project that involved former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office of Analytics, for example, Mason showed how researchers sought to speed up ambulance response times by looking at the order of questions operators asked over the phone. “They reduced response times by more than a minute,” she said. “(This is work that’s) saving lives.”

Mason offered other open data projects that were less dramatic but equally compelling. There’s an app, for example, that sifts through health inspections and can send a text to users who “check in” via social networking service Foursquare at a particular restaurant.

“Unfortunately, it usually only arrives once you’ve ordered,” she admitted. “There’s still some tweaking to do there.”

In some cases, the volume, variety and velocity of what’s being released by governments might qualify as “big data,” which is typical defined as unstructured information difficult to analyze using traditional technologies. However Mason said that advances in computing are making the possibilities of working with such data increasingly accessible, and encouraged Canada and others to continue exploring avenues to empower citizens with it.

“It has to be open. It has to get to as many people as possible,” she said. “Even if it’s just an Excel spreadsheet, someone will make it useful. Data and technology give us superpowers — they give us capabilities we would never have had.”

Which may mean that if UX designers can harness open data, they have the potential to be superheroes.

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The Research Opportunity: Data.gc.ca was revamped last year to be eager to navigate, with new data sets being uploaded regularly for researchers that want to apply them to problems they’re investigating.

The Commercialization Potential: Keep an eye on the CODE site for news about apps that came out of the hackathon. Some may have a built-in market of Canadian citizens.

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